At the Cottage!

For two weeks now we’ve been up on our piece of land in the Lanark Highlands, working on our new cabin.  Dominik’s brother, Severin, has flown over to help us.  He and Dominik usually work together in the autumn on it, when the kids are back in school in Austria, but this year it worked out to be in August.  He only has two weeks here so work is going full-throttle, with bacon and eggs every morning as sustenance for the workers! 

The windows are now framed in, as are the doors.  The centre brick wall is in. We found new bricks at a fraction of their value on a second-hand website.  This is the wall where our woodstove will stand.  We also have bricks laid out underneath it.  This should provide us with some good thermal mass to maintain heat in the autumn and winter.  The guys also installed all of the windows and also the door to where the porch will be. It is so exciting to see the progress here! I can picture how our cabin will look when it is done, and I can’t wait!  We want to make a cord-wood cabin and so the outer walls will take some time to finish, but we will have some temporary inside walls and insulation in the upper portion this fall.  With a wood stove inside it will give us a much longer season here in the bush! J  I have been making quite a few trips out to the lumber yard/hardware store.  The Timbermart in Lanark is great- very affordable and the people are friendly.  I wish that they had 'frequent buyer points' or something though.  We'd be doing well with them! :-)  I have also gotten to know Carleton Place a bit better.  Well, the portion of it which has Home Depot, Walmart, the gas station and the Tim Horton's.  After all, what more could you ask for?

While the guys were working, if they didn't need us, the kids could play and I could have a little down-time in the mornings.  I found some great cups and saucers at the second hand shop in Brockville (Thrifty's- it is amazing!) and I will make a bodum of coffee and have coffee and a biscuit in the late morning.  I think that I like the ritual of it as much as anything.  But having some time to relax and read my Bible is vital.

We have some new neighbours this year, as two properties near us have sold, and a third is for sale.  Our first neighbour is busy renovating his cottage and has been very nice.  Then there is a cottage for sale and we haven’t seen the owner at all.  Finally, next to him there is a family who come from close to Brockville!  They have a daughter who is Rebecca’s age and the girls are thrilled to have each other to swim and paint and play with.   Our boys play a lot of baseball here or go canoeing or fishing when it's not too windy.  One day last week the wind picked up after Jonathan was out on the lake with the two younger boys.  They were blown down towards the beaver swamp and were whistling with the life-jacket whistle for help.  I was thinking, typically, 'Why are they whistling?  They can't possibly have an emergency'.  Well, with a bit of coaching they managed to get themselves back to our dock. 

In anticipation of guests we have made some signs to lead to our cottage.  Just a simple arrow and ‘Vamos’ written in a bright paint.  But we needed four of them so we chose different colours just to mix things up a bit! J   Our one set of neighbours are going to do the same and then our road will really look like a typical Canadian 'road to the cottage'!   

Once this flurry of work is past then we will look forward to lots of visitors.   We will be able to take them out in the boat, either knee-boarding or just for a lovely trip down the lake.  We did that the other evening after work and dinner had finished.  There were two loons on the connecting lake who were calling to each other, back and forth, for ages!  The sun was setting and the sky was a lovely rosy colour.  Without wind the water is like glass and it is truly an idyllic setting.

I have our camping kitchen well set up with supplies, including a few pressure-canned meals that I made while Dominik and Jonathan were away.  These are very convenient but I think that I’ve concluded that they are not very cost efficient.  Until we have our own meat and produce the cost of canning, including the extra energy to pressure can, is really high.  On the positive side, these meals are healthier than ones in the store.  I tried to use my great-grandmother’s Dutch Oven to bake some sour dough bread but, unfortunately, I burnt it to a crisp!  It wasn’t too bad INSIDE the loaf but the outside was black.  I will have to try again and use much less wood or let the fire burn down a lot more before I attempt it.  My next attempt will be a pineapple upside-down cake.  This sounds great but we’ll have to see if it turns out!  That might be in a while because we've had a fire ban on now and it's been windy so we're not doing any real camp fires.  We have a separate wood-fired barbeque where we cook our breakfasts, but I would use our fire pit to use the Dutch Oven.  I guess the next experiment will have to wait a bit!  

Last year we made a trip around Austria and also into Italy for our holiday. I made a trip to Rome with two friends.  I love Italy.  It is relaxed, classic, there are wood-fired pizzas, fantastic pastas and the people are very friendly.  This year, however, it is definitely out of reach.  But in memory of that it was lovely to enjoy some Italian wine with foccacia as an appetiser one day.  Two dear, wonderful friends from Austria were in Italy this past spring.  They each sent me a little bottle of Limoncello- a lemon liquor.  I have one in my kitchen there to remind me of our friends and of Italy.  There are times when I really miss life in Austria and in Europe...and so these little reminders are special. 

This last week my parents came up to visit with my cousin, Natalie.  She is my Dad's second cousin and I hadn't seen her in years!  We used to be at the same family cottage at Sharbot Lake when we were children. I was always so excited to see my older cousins there.  It was great to show her around our little piece of woods and could catch up on family news.  The last time we saw each other Rebecca was a baby, so there was a lot to catch up on!

Thursday was our last day there, as Severin was flying back to Austria on Friday afternoon.  In these two short weeks we were able to accomplish so many things.  We are thankful that Dominik's brother could come over to help, as he had done with Dominik for so many other years in the fall.  I am very thankful that Dominik can do these things himself as it saves so much money and allows us to make things and enjoy things that we otherwise might not be able to.  Being in the bush and building are also great opportunities for the kids to learn about nature, construction, weather, and so many other things.  It is so peaceful there.  

The time is coming when we will have to be back in town to work and to focus on school, but until that comes we will make the most of out little piece of Canadian wilderness!